“I have no idea how many people I’ve pointed guns at in my law enforcement career that I didn’t fire on,” Craig Douglas says. Craig’s 21-year law enforcement career included service in a narcotics unit and two years spent undercover. During that time, he encountered countless dangerous criminals. “If I point a gun at someone,” Craig explains, “I’m most assuredly comfortable with shooting them. I’ve just chosen for the moment not to.”
What Craig is saying is that, in the course of his law enforcement career, he has faced the threat of great bodily harm or death on multiple occasions, and during the process of deploying deadly force – during the shooting cycle – the attacker responded in a way that allowed Craig to interrupt the cycle and choose not to shoot when the attacker de-escalated at the sight of the firearm. Craig refers to the act of displaying a firearm without actually firing the weapon as a “tap on the breaks.”
“Clearing a covered garment and establishing a grip on a gun – that works,” Craig says. “Clearing a covered garment, establishing a grip on a gun, and actually taking it out of the holster, but not pointing it at someone – that works. That’s a tap on the brakes.” These are examples of defensive display.
To be clear, an unjustified defensive display of a firearm is a serious crime. While laws vary from one jurisdiction to the next, unjustified defensive displays can be charged as brandishing, assault, assault with a deadly weapon – or several other criminal charges that carry the risk of significant time behind bars. Nonetheless, criminal defense attorney and National Trial Counsel for CCW Safe Don West stresses that any criminal consequences related to a defensive display are generally “light years” less severe than the consequences of unjustifiably discharging your firearm – even if no one is harmed or killed...cont'd
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